The Guardian’s Top 20 Geek Novels

We know online polls don’t necessarily mean too much. Actually, most polls of any kind tend to be meaningless anyway.

As such, I’m not about to discuss the validity of this particular poll [Top 20 Geek Novels] or the interpretation of the results [Top 20 Geek Novels – Results!], and instead I’m just gonna see how many of these books I’ve actually read.

So far, 132 people have voted for the best geek novels written in English since 1932, in spite of Survey Monkey‘s rubric saying free polls were limited to 100 responses. The top 20 is therefore as follows, with the numbers in brackets showing the number of votes.

I’ve read some of the top books on the list, while there’re some I’ve been meaning to read for ages but have never got round to yet – books like Asimov’s Foundation series, and the classic graphic novel Watchmen.

Others I’ve yet to get my hands on are Microserfs, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Diamond Age and Trouble with Lichen.

Anyway, this list comes at a good time for me – I’ve been actively increasing the size of my personal library now with the latest addition being DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little. At least lists like this make a good reference point for future titles I should look out for that appear to be timeless in nature.

If I were to take the poll seriously I’d be ashamed to say I’m not geek enough, as I’ve only read the most popular one, Hitchhiker’s. (or: I’m pleased to have read the #1!) But I’ve been meaning to read many of them for a long time: Neuromancer, 1984, and Watchmen, especially.

For Dune, I’ve played the games and poured over all the Wikipedia articles. Good enough? =)